nyj57: finally feeling the pinch?


Nearly six months now I've been unemployed. Throughout this period, I've had this sneaking suspicion I wasn't always sticking to my $50/week food-and-incidentals budget. But somehow I always had food to eat, coffee to drink, and money to pay my bills. In fact, a few days ago I stopped to think about this and how much it indicates about God's grace to me. Despite a very minor fall in DC over the Columbus Day weekend, I've had good health all summer — and now fall — long, never once being forced to dip into that health-insurance reserve, my two cans of Campbell's chicken soup.

And generally speaking I haven't even endured much social privation on account of my reduced ability to eat out, see shows, buy drinks and so on. Friends have been extremely generous about springing for occasional lunches and dinners or sending me home well-stocked with a bag of fruit.

It's partly for that reason I've maintained a fairly diverse diet, or what I like to call the modified macro diet: coffee, nuts, chocolate, olives, yogurt, eggs and jelly beans (well, sometimes). This plan has also included copious amounts of fresh guacamole (a semi-luxury good my sister calls "gourmet" based on all the chopping required), and frequent servings of a Betty Crocker mock-taco recipe that calls for tuna fish, black beans and seasonings. And how can I complain about eating home-made bread and even cinnamon rolls throughout the past six months?

But Saturday the lean side of this lifestyle blew through like the crisp autumn winds we're getting now. The gust rattled my apartment-building lobby that afternoon when I opened up the mailbox and saw that neither the week's unemployment check nor my second check from That Company had arrived. This presented something of a problem in that rent had been due the day before. The "break in claims" for which I had to return a form to the "nize-doll" (NYSDOL) office did not bode well for prompt resumption of my weekly unemployment check schedule. In fact, it now appears there may be as much as a two-week delay since that form (mailed today) must make its way through the mail and get processed before my checks are released and mailed (normally taking three days for transit). I contacted That Company Saturday, delicately inquiring whether I could claim my check on Monday (today). Alas, their bookkeeper won't be in till Wednesday ... forcing me to write a partial check to my landlord and ask if I could get him the rest in two or three days' time.

He was willing to oblige and fairly gracious (I honestly doubt they would have cashed the checks any earlier, as they usually take their time), but it didn't stop the tears encroaching as I hung up the phone. Truthfully I haven't been that concerned about all of this — mostly fretful over the process of getting things resolved — but the next two weeks are going to be lean. Pretty much all of that Wednesday check will go to the rest of rent, leaving little money for food, bills, and whatever else comes along before the unemployment checks arrive.

Sure I could temp, but money wouldn't get here any sooner, and this week I really need to focus on a very important teaching-job application due Nov. 1. Yes, I may consider selling some books I don't need, and unloading a pair of Marc Jacobs shoes I've never worn that much ... but the real issue here is one of faith.

Now before you skeptics shake your heads at such sentimental foolishness, consider. If I call myself a Christian, shouldn't I be willing to take my God seriously? Either I put my full weight on him and trust the divine being that brought about this world's existence, much less my own, to provide for my needs as they come along (since my life is ultimately his problem, by this reasoning) ... or I call such religion a sham and recant a belief too half-hearted to support real action. Some years ago I heard an example of this: a man once strung a rope across Niagara Falls, drawing great crowds, and proceeded to walk across the falls on the rope. The crowds were agog. Next he took a wheelbarrow across, generating more cheers and awe. Finally he proposed to carry a person, in which the crowd cheered him on. "Do you believe I can do it?" he asked. "Yes! We believe!" But I tell you who really believed: the person willing to take him at his word and be that passenger.

I don't think trusting God is as dangerous a bet as that involved in my example, but the point is similar. If I'm going to claim to stake my life on him, I either take that all the way or acknowledge that failing to trust him when it most matters is failure to believe at all. Besides, much of human anxiety is based not on the fact a solution truly doesn't exist, but that we don't yet know what the solution will be. The only bill I had to address today was my rent. That has in fact been resolved.

I still have food in my fridge, two bucks-n-change in my wallet, etc. Why get all stressed out over problems that aren't yet here? Better to focus on what I need to do now, which is draft the essays for that application. "Do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matt. 6:34)

"And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life's span?" (Matt. 6:27) Likewise, how could I, by being anxious, get any more information about what the problems I'll face will be, or how they might be resolved? Besides, by waiting for God to take care of things rather than rushing out to charge bills or groceries to my credit card, I might be pleasantly surprised by what he chooses to do. Two summers ago I was also unemployed, and not even collecting (as I am now). Yet somehow that summer I managed to not just pay my bills, buy food, and fill my gas tank, I was able to fly up to Seattle for a mini-family reunion. Much to my astonishment, God moved the heart of friends who had recently quit their jobs to give me money for the trip. And it's in large part past graciousness like that that gives me the courage to trust him now.

Besides, I won't really feel the cut till I'm all out of milk and too broke for lattes. ;) But if you want to order a scarf or buy a picture, I certainly won't deter you. ;) (PayPal, checks and other forms of payment accepted.)

posted @ 04:34 PM on Mon - October 18, 2004 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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